This invention relates generally to the fields of biology and chemistry. More particularly, the invention is directed to modified fluorescent proteins and to methods for the preparation and use thereof.
In biochemistry, molecular biology and medical diagnostics, it is often desirable to add a fluorescent label to a protein so that the protein can be easily tracked and quantified. The normal procedures for labeling requires that the protein be covalently reacted in vitro with fluorescent dyes, then repurified to remove excess dye and any damaged protein. If the labeled protein is to be used inside cells, it usually has to be microinjected; this is a difficult and time-consuming operation that cannot be performed on large numbers of cells. These problems may, however, be eliminated by joining a nucleotide sequence coding for the protein of interest with the sequence for a naturally fluorescent protein, then expressing the fusion protein.
The green fluorescent protein (GFP) of the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria is a remarkable protein with strong visible absorbance and fluorescence from a p-hydroxybenzylideneimidazolone chromophore, which is generated by cyclization and oxidation of the protein's own Ser-Tyr-Gly sequence at positions 65 to 67. A cDNA sequence [SEQ ID NO:1] for one isotype of GFP has been reported [Prasher, D. C. et al., Gene 111, 229-233 (1992)]; cloning of this cDNA has enabled GFP expression in different organisms. The finding that the expressed protein becomes fluorescent in cells from a wide variety of organisms [Chalfie, M. et al., Science 263, 802-805 (1994)] makes GFP a powerful new tool in molecular and cell biology and indicates that the oxidative cyclization must be either spontaneous or dependent only on ubiquitous enzymes and reactants.
A major question in protein photophysics is how a single chromophore can give widely different spectra depending on its local protein environment. This question has received the most attention with respect to the multiple colors of visual pigments based on retinal [Merbs, S. L. & Nathans, J. Science 258, 464-466 (1992)], but is also important in GFP. The GFP from Aequorea and that of the sea pansy Renilla reniformis share the same chromophore, yet Aequorea GFP has two absorbance peaks at 395 and 475 nm, whereas Renilla GFP has only a single absorbance peak at 498 nm, with about 5.5 fold greater monomer extinction coefficient than the major 395 nm peak of the Aequorea protein [Ward, W. W. in Bioluminescence and Chemiluminescence (eds. DeLuca, M. A. & McElroy, W. D.) 235-242 (Academic Press, New York, 1981)]. The spectra of the isolated chromophore and denatured protein at neutral pH do not match the spectra of either native protein [Cody, C. W. et al., Biochemistry 32, 1212-1218 (1993)].
For many practical applications, the spectrum of Renilla GFP would be preferable to that of Aequorea, because wavelength discrimination between different fluorophores and detection of resonance energy transfer are easier if the component spectra are tall and narrow rather than low and broad. Furthermore, the longer wavelength excitation peak (475 nm) of Aequorea GFP is almost ideal for fluorescein filter sets and is resistant to photobleaching, but has lower amplitude than the shorter wavelength peak at 395 nm, which is more susceptible to photobleaching [Chalfie et al. (1994), supra]. For all these reasons, it would clearly be advantageous to convert the Aequorea GFP excitation spectrum to a single peak, and preferably at longer wavelengths.
There is also a need in the art for proteins which fluoresce at different wavelengths. Variants of fluorescent proteins with different colors would also be very useful for simultaneous comparisons of multiple protein fates, developmental lineages, and gene expression levels.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide improved fluorescent proteins which do not suffer from the drawbacks of native Aequorea GFP.